Lately I’m wondering about why I blog…
I started writing in June 2011 (I think) on a-n.co.uk as a way of recording and talking through my practice while I did my MA. I didn’t stop, and here we are almost six years later. For a while I posted on a-n and on my wordpress website, but due to frustration with posting images, and the inaccessibility for the non-members, I seem to have stopped posting on a-n. This is sad, as I owe them a lot, my loyalty was stretched. I think now I have fondness: I’m still a member, and will continue to be, but I no longer want to spend an extra hour of my time swearing at the way the site works and being annoyed that my images are upside down, sideways or stretched beyond recognition, depending on which device I’m looking at… then suddenly I could only post on my phone! Anyway, that’s sort of beside the point… I will probably post this one on a-n, so that readers that used to visit me there know why I stopped posting and where to find me now if they want to carry on reading.
(Thank you everyone at a-n, for everything… and if I suddenly find everything works, I’ll carry on!)
Back to my opening sentence… why do I blog then?
By writing my thoughts, I can assess them at a bit more distance. I also find that if I’m having trouble expressing what I mean, that perhaps the ideas are not quite ripe. Sometimes when this happens I stop writing, but sometimes I carry on and the comment or interaction with people within the blogging platform, or more commonly these days on Facebook, I can grapple with my thoughts and pin them down long enough to see if they are worth my effort!
When I first blogged, mid-MA, there was a thought that I might have intellectual discussions about my readings and so on. That didn’t really happen, as I discovered that that approach isn’t really me. I had at the time started looking at whether music could be part of my practice. I look back with amazement now that I ever thought it wouldn’t or couldn’t or shouldn’t be!
I also had a regular habit of telling what I was listening to. That it sort of fell by the wayside, but I think I’m going to resurrect it for a while….
At the end of last term’s Songwriting Circle, Dan Whitehouse suggested that over the summer we think about how we might build an album. Think about a theme, songs, a concept, a title, a sound, a genre, album art… all or some of those things. It was a timely suggestion.
I have swimming around in my head and in my sketch book and songwriting notebooks a few songs that aren’t right for singing with The Sitting Room; I have a title which is borne out of the concept; I think it possible defies genres (unless someone wants to help me there); I have collection of sounds, words, lyrics, poems, images, made items, drawings… these things were swimming around as if homeless. Over the summer I started to gather these waifs and strays together. They fit my working title, and there is a commonality… a thread… a theme… So now, I have to see them as a whole. How do I work these things together to make something tangibly, interestingly “me”?
So now I’m listening to how other musicians have done it. And this is what I’m listening to this afternoon. If by any chance you look at this list and think, “Oh! Elena might like this band/artist!” Then please let me know.
It’s not that I want what I’m doing to sound like these people… to me it’s like going to a gallery to see the art, but while you’re there you look at how the work is hung, what it is next to, how it is lit, what is emphasised. Look at the context, not just the content… That’s what I’m doing, in the hope that some good stuff will seep in and have an effect!
Portishead – Dummy
Bon Iver – 22 a Million
Villagers – Darling Arithmetic
Tunng – Comments of the Inner Chorus
Radiohead – A Moon Shaped Pool
Husky Rescue – The Long Lost Friend
PS Dear a-n folks… it seems to be working… I’ll check back in with other devices…
